Hospitality

 

‘In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found. ... It is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings.’

~ Henri Nouwen.

I am struck by this quote, in relation to my city of Sunderland, full of strangers ‘estranged from their own past, culture and country’ because the coal pits and shipyards were closed; or because their ancestral villages are in Bangladesh or Pakistan; or because they are recently-arrived asylum seekers, international students, or social care workforce; or – like me – because they have never been rooted in any place. But whatever the reason, and whatever our history, so many of us have become strangers. New Testament ‘hospitality’ is [the Greek] ‘philoxenia’ – literally love of the stranger. We are all searching for a hospitable place, but we will find it together or not at all.